The Economic Way of Thinking 13th Edition by David Prychitko, Peter Boettke, Paul Heyne

Exercise 17

A newspaper story reported what it called "a mystery." Representatives of the manufacturer and the regional distributor of Head skis tried to buy the entire stock of their own skis being offered for sale at very low prices by a chain of discount stores. At one store the purchasers immediately went outside and broke all the skis in the store parking lot. Can you explain this mystery?
Does the following information provide any clues? The manager of a sporting goods store that regularly carries Head skis said the action was an attempt by the distributor to get defective skis off the market. An executive with the discount store said the skis were not defective, but were a standard production model originally destined for shipment out of the country. What were the manufacturer and distributor trying to do, and what went wrong?